In case you're wondering it was made by George Etheredge. It was used in an NYT article about the artist Chuck Close.
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Edit
Haha, the mystery is solved.
pp_mcqueennone's comment showed me the the way the "photoshop" was made. The photographer took a close-up photo of a mosaic artwork in a NYC subway: archive.today • Art Underground: A First Look at the Second Avenue Subway - The New York Times.
Ninja edit: Haha x2. He didn't even do that much. I checked the photo credit and I learned he took the original subway photo. All he did to make the eye was crop that.
I googled neural network effect a couple weeks ago and played around with some very simple generators. It didn't even occur to me that process could have been used. I think you're on to something.
Here's a generator: Arbitrary Style Transfer in the Browser.